Ancient olive groves older than empires and the crumbling hilltop city that time unmade
Bar is Montenegro's only commercial port, an unassuming Adriatic town that hides extraordinary things: a stari grad (old town) fortress shattered by an 1979 earthquake into photogenic ruins on a hilltop 4km inland, and the Stara Maslina — an olive tree over 2,000 years old, the oldest documented living olive in the world. The port connects Montenegro to Italy by overnight ferry, making it a practical entry point for those arriving from Bari. The surrounding Rumija highlands are quiet walking country with views across Lake Skadar on one side and the Adriatic on the other. Bar is not a resort t…
Old Bar (Stari Bar) was a fortified city-state originally inhabited by the Illyrians, later contested between Byzantine, Serbian, and Venetian powers throughout the medieval period. The Venetians held it for most of the 15th century before the Ottomans captured it in 1571 — it remained under Ottoman rule until Montenegrin forces liberated it in 1878 after the Congress of Berlin. The 1979 Montenegro earthquake (magnitude 7.1) destroyed much of old Bar's interior, leaving the fortress walls standing around open sky — what was once a living city became the ruins that exist today. The modern port…